A Rezolva flagship project
Judgment in the Room
A global book and interview project exploring how experienced dispute-resolution practitioners make difficult professional judgments.
Judgment in the Room is an international book and interview project exploring a part of dispute-resolution practice that is difficult to capture in textbooks: the professional judgment that develops through experience.
Its subject is not a new mediation model or a single preferred approach.
It is the reasoning that sits underneath practice — what experienced practitioners notice, how they interpret what is happening, how they choose between several defensible interventions, and why good practitioners sometimes respond very differently to similar situations.
The project brings perspectives from different jurisdictions, professional backgrounds and dispute-resolution settings alongside one another to explore both common ground and legitimate disagreement.
How the book connects with Rezolva
Judgment in the Room is the first major publishing and interview project associated with the growing Rezolva archive of professional judgment.
A selected international group of experienced practitioners will participate in longer professionally filmed conversations for the project.
Perspectives contributed by Rezolva’s wider invited Verified Practitioner community may also help broaden the range of professional experience, jurisdictions and approaches considered as the project develops.
Not every Rezolva contribution will appear in the book. Contributions are reviewed and used in accordance with the Contributor Agreement and applicable permissions.
The wider purpose of Rezolva extends beyond any single publication: to preserve useful, attributable professional perspectives that might otherwise remain largely unrecorded.
Featured filmed conversations
A selected international group of experienced practitioners participate in longer professionally filmed conversations exploring professional judgment in depth.
These conversations form a central part of the research and source material for Judgment in the Room.
Verified Practitioner perspectives
Rezolva’s wider invited practitioner community contributes shorter perspectives on carefully selected questions.
These contributions help broaden the professional record across different jurisdictions, disciplines, practice settings and approaches.
From Judgment in the Room
Where good practitioners disagree
Experienced practitioners do not always make the same decision when faced with the same difficult moment.
One may intervene quickly when emotion rises. Another may wait. One may see silence as a sign that the conversation is failing; another may regard the same silence as the point at which something important is finally happening.
The difference is not necessarily competence. It may be judgment.
What matters is what the practitioner noticed, what they believed was happening, what alternatives they considered, and why one intervention seemed preferable to another in that particular room.
Judgment in the Room explores these differences by placing experienced practitioners’ perspectives alongside one another — not to identify a single correct approach, but to make visible the reasoning that usually remains beneath the surface of professional practice.
Illustrative of the themes and editorial approach of the book project.
What the project explores
Experience
What practitioners learn through repeated exposure to difficult disputes that is difficult to acquire from formal instruction alone.
Judgment
How experienced practitioners decide when to intervene, when to wait, what to notice and which of several reasonable approaches fits the particular moment.
Difference
Why capable practitioners can interpret the same situation differently — and what can be learned from those disagreements.
Legacy
What experienced practitioners believe should be preserved and passed to the next generation of dispute-resolution professionals.
Your perspective is part of a wider professional record
If you have been invited to contribute to Rezolva, your questions have been selected to capture aspects of professional experience and judgment that may be valuable to preserve.
There is no expectation that contributors provide a definitive or universally correct answer. The value often lies in explaining what you notice, how you think about the issue and why your approach may differ from that of another experienced practitioner.
Project and organisation
Judgment in the Room is an international ADR interview and book project developed by Rezolva Pty Ltd and founded by Sam Lawson. The project records the practical judgment of experienced mediators, arbitrators and other dispute-resolution professionals through structured interviews. Selected material contributes to the development of Rezolva’s professional practice-intelligence archive and may also support the Judgment in the Room book and related professional and educational material, subject to the contributor permissions and review processes applicable to the project.